1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communicating between a first station and a second station, in which a communication is initiated from one of said stations.
2. Related Art
Many environments are known for facilitating communication between stations. Increasingly, business activities are being performed using telecommunication systems in which customers are placed in contact with agents. Presently, this is usually achieved using conventional voice circuits, via the public switched telephone network although proposals have been made for allowing video connections, employing the integrated services digital network.
Increasingly, use is also being made of the Internet and, in particular, the World Wide Web, making use of hypertext transport protocol for conveying Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) pages of information between stations. However, presently, the nature of the World Wide Web is such that it is arranged to convey discrete pages and, as such, does not facilitate the presentation of an integrated service.
The present invention relates to a method of communicating between a first station and a second station, comprising steps of establishing communication from said first station to a serving means; establishing communication from said serving means to said second station; displaying similar prompting information at both said first station and at said second station; receiving manually generated data in response to said prompting information at either said first station or said second station; and displaying said generated information at both said first station and at said second station.
In a preferred embodiment, a user at a first station initiates communication to make contact with said serving means. Agents may also identify their availability to receive communications from users by contacting said serving means.
Preferably, the stations execute browsing instructions, transmit resource locations and receive encoded pages of information from the serving means. The encoded pages may include executable routines to present modified pages at the stations.
In a preferred embodiment, manually generated data is encoded as a message and transmitted to the serving means and the serving means may supply encoded pages to associated stations in response to receiving these messages.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided communication apparatus comprising a first station, a second station and a serving means, including means for establishing communication from said first station to said serving means; means for establishing communication from said serving means to said second station, wherein said serving means includes means for generating encoded information for application to said stations; wherein said stations include means for displaying pages of information received from said serving means and for receiving manually generated data in response to displayed prompts, and said serving means includes means for receiving information from said stations and for issuing substantially similar information to said first station and to said second station.
Preferably, said apparatus includes means for initiating a telephone call between said stations in response to said station being associated through said serving means.